The Last Judgment, Michelangelo and the Vatican 11/2/11

Michelangelos Last Judgment is painted on the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel in
Vatican City. He began work in 1537 and 4 years later, Pope Paul unveiled the masterpiece on
Christmas Day 1541. This fresco signals the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of a new
era in art. I will show how the formal characteristics, used by Michelangelo, differ from his
earlier work and traditional Renaissance methods.
The Last Judgment is a huge fresco that spans the entire altar wall of the Papal Chapel. It is a
depiction of judgment day when the souls of humans rise and descend to their fates, as judged by
Christ. When we place ourselves within the lower half of this crowded, swirling mass of
humanity , we see the dead rising in the lower section on Christs right side, launching
themselves heavenward like rockets, and swirling over the top. Looking towards Christs left we
see souls being pulled into hell by demons that appear to be human, but with grotesque animal
ears, horns and green, grey and blue skin. Whats worse is that they very much seem to enjoy the
pain and torment they are inflicting the damned, overwhelmed by rejection. We can hear their
agonizing cries of anguish, gnashing their teeth in pain, as they sink violently to the mythical
River Styx and the boat of Charon, who ferries the damned to eternal punishment. Here, the
bright blue sky above doesnt penetrate the stink of decay and death engulfing us. Anxiety and
panic blinds us as we desperately strain to grab the muscular arm of an angel who may help us
enter the intense blue sky of the heavens. Many of the damned have given up hope of salvation
and contemplate their awful fate. Near us, there is a condemned man at the moment of full
knowledge and grief of his upcoming punishment. He cowers in in shame, even as 2 demons
drag him downward and a third reptilian creature bites into his thigh. There are over 300 figures
within the work, and Michelangelo has infused into this mad swirling drama a nightmarish sense
of fear. It is the catastrophe at the end of time and a scene that depicts angst among the characters
to the point of fury.
Above us, in the center of the bright sky, is Christ illuminated by a brilliant glow of divine light.
Christ, a figure of broad, powerful proportions, is raising his right hand, commanding the
virtuous to heaven and sending the sinners to hell. He is beardless and muscular resembling the
Greek sun-god Apollo. His raised arm is a gesture of command, setting in motion the events we
see above and below us. His decree gives the entire painting a clockwise swirl motion, and you
can read the painting that way. The Virgin Mary, sitting next to Christ, looks away, unable to
gaze directly at her son because of the harshness of his judgments. Clusters of faces peek out
from behind those figures standing in front of them growing dimmer in the distance.
Michelangelo is using a technique in which one area of focus can be seen clearly while things
outside that area are blurred, giving this sixteenth century fresco a third dimension,. Infinite
space stretches out in all directions. Instead of using linear perspective, Michelangelo overlapped
figures in densely packed groups, forming chains to indicate movement. Compositionally, the

pattern of the surface is a series of curved and angular lines directed vertically. Every element of
the painting is a part of the vertical patterning, curving or zigzagging upward. One of
Michelangelo's most remarkable innovations is his elimination of a frame. The drama continues
off in all directions, laterally and also below. Without a frame, portrays the uncertainty of men
and women moving by a force outside of their control to a fate still unknown to them.
Before he began painting the Last Judgment, Michelangelo had the wall reconstructed so that it
became vaulted ceiling and overhang the bottom by 12 inches. One would see the forward
inclination from the ground. This created a looming effect on the viewer and everyone in the
chapel, as if the judgment were falling upon him. His use of ultramarine blue heightened an
effect of infinite space, so that the sky of the Last Judgment is one of the most obvious
differences with Michelangelos vaulted ceiling and the most striking color in the Sistine Chapel.
What is remarkable about the fresco is that nearly every face has a single common emotion.
Agitation on every face- no one is marching serenely into heaven. Rather, it is if a great
cacophony had exploded around Christ and everyone is shouting and talking at the same time.
Each character exhibits a personal response to Christ, which is at the heart of the fresco. The
artist's self-portrait appears twice; his own face in the empty envelope of skin that hangs
grotesquely from a saint's hand, a metaphor for the artist's tortured soul, and in the figure in the
lower left hand corner, which is looking encouragingly at those rising from their graves. His own
self-portrait shows a very distinct contrast to all of his other strong and dynamic human figures
that characterize his style. This flat, hanging skin represents, instead, quite literally a deflation of
his human body. Michelangelo was metaphorically denied the beauty, strength, and glory of all
the other figures because of the patrons who flayed him and squeezed every ounce of labor,
talent, and beauty out of his being - leaving nothing but a drooping exterior body. The artist
could not have left us clearer evidence of his feeling towards life and of his highest ideals. It's
clear that the epitome of the so-called "Renaissance Man" asks himself, "where will I be on that
Great Day?" and that he challenges every person who engages it, "And what about you?"
The spirit of the work is totally different from that of Michelangelos Sistine Chapel ceiling,
unveiled 29 years earlier. In the interim, the Church had been torn apart by the Reformation,
Rome had been sacked (1527), and Michelangelo's fresco breathes the new militancy of the
Catholic Counter-Reformation. Copernicus was the first person to formulate a comprehensive
heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe. The optimism
and confidence of the ceiling is replaced by the pessimism and conflict of the altar wall. Calls
for reform led to the denunciation of the excesses of the Renaissance. A new spirituality based on
emphasizing a personal rather than an institutional relationship with God had exploded in the
city. With these problems literally tearing Europe apart, Italian artists responded to their
disillusionment by conveying their intense emotions through a new art form that reflected
disintegration, of the universe, religion and humanity. As in his earlier work, Michelangelo
continues to focus on the human body as the most beautiful method to express the divine soul,
but here bodies are stretched and ill-proportioned, threatening and terrifying. His theology, and

therefore his politics, was profoundly supportive of the new reforms. He believed, as most
people did at the time, that Rome had earned its suffering because of years of decadence.
Michelangelos own rage, his own desire, his own suffering vibrated with the peoples wishes. As
they assume ugly, awkward poses, Michelangelo explores the power of ugliness to portray the
terror of the Last Judgment. It sent a potent message to religious reformers. Those who turn their
back on the Catholic Church are destined for hell.
Michelangelo positioned the image of hell directly over the altar over the altar in the eyes of the
pope. His view of the popes after years of living in Rome and working around the papal court
was dark. The popes were corrupt, tyrannical and power mad and the chapel was used by the
pope and his household and court. He had disagreed with the popes he had served, often at a
profound level, because his faith was fairly straightforward while their faith was often about
politics and greed. He thought his faith in the church was often stronger than theirs. His
message of condemnation was aimed at them. Yet, he was given artistic license as never before
and essentially unlimited funds. Michelangelos power to demand his patrons trust enabled him
to get away with painting himself and his artistic frustrations among the martyrs and saints.
An earlier Renaissance humanist would draw inspiration from the nakedness of the ancient
Greeks and Romans; the degree of nudity within art would be understood, but not in the more
populist times that accompanied the creation of the fresco. At the heart of the Reformations,
both Catholic and Protestant, was a growing sense of the centrality of Scriptures, and there were
no Greek philosophers in the Bible. Counterreformation sensibility about nudity was far more
biblical than Greek, and such blatantly Renaissance depictions of Christ by the foremost painter
in Europe in the papal chapel itself ignited a firestorm. Michelangelo pained the beauty and
ideal form of the human body to represent the beauty of the soul and the divine. Flowing robes
have been put aside, for in Michelangelo's view we will all meet the Lord without emblems of
our earthly status. A new uncertainty had gripped Europe. If the harmonious and idealistic
representations of the High Renaissance expressed the supreme confidence of man, who saw
himself as the measure of all things in the first few decades of the 16th century, this certainty was
soon shattered with creation of the Last Judgment. Jesus comes upon the clouds, not as a gentle
good shepherd, but terrible as an army. His face is dispassionate, almost blank and particularly
terrifying in its ambiguity. It seems impossible to determine his feeling, whether he is furious or
uncaring and detached, as he casts countless souls into eternal fire. The ambiguity of the judging
Christ evokes anxiety in all the characters of the fresco, even the saints- all are reacting to him,
measuring their lives by him, so that even the best of them suffer from insecurity, like
Michelangelo himself.
This fresco depicted a Last Judgment unlike any other before. In earlier works, the end of the
world is stable, frozen and hierarchical. Christ appeared at the top of very fresco, with the saint
directly below him, the souls in purgatory below them and the damned at the bottom. Here,
Christ is the dramatic center of the fresco. Unlike earlier examples, there are no obvious
hierarchal zones. The traditional static design has given way to a terrifying dynamism, full of

tension and anxiety. Violence of this ferocity had never been seen in religious painting up until
that time. The characters are all moving, jumbled, and divided into groups that flow into each
other so that the piece forms a dramatic unit. This novel perception is no longer about
reasserting social structure but about encoding a dynamic new pattern with the sun and God in
the form of Christ as the center.
The Renaissance optimism exuberantly displayed prior on the ceiling had given way to the dark
foreboding of the Catholic Reformation in the altar wall. Michelangelo had painted the vaulted
ceiling during the height of the Renaissance. Now, there is a fundamental shift from unlimited
confidence in the power of human action to a hyperconsciousness of sin and fear of damnation.
Most Renaissance paintings, up to this point, included a frame to create a limited space.
Michelangelo designed the Last Judgment to stretch from wall to wall without a frame, creating
an implied limitless space; the viewer is drawn into the scene, causing them to question their
own lives and their own place on that terrible day. The new fresco would stand apart from the
predated iconography of the chapel. It wasnt coordinated with the ceiling or lateral walls in any
way- the characters were on a completely different scale, almost inhuman in their exaggerated
musculature, like superheroes twisting in the air. For Renaissance artists like Michelangelo, the
human body was the most important metaphor of the human soul. His groundbreaking concept of
the event shows figures equalized in their nudity, stripped bare of rank. The proportions of his
figures grow broader and more menacing; a marked a change in style for the artist. The overall
structure seems to swirl around Christ at the center, replacing the traditional patterns of
horizontal layers depicting heaven, earth and hell.
The aureole of light around Christ serves to memorialize the position of the sun in the
Copernican universe. The figure Christ is the sun, and all the souls, both blessed and demand,
revolve around him. This glowing brilliance also emphasizes Jesus as the classic sun god of
mythology.
For some reason, Michelangelo has abandoned the traditional iconography of angels with wings
and it is difficult to tell the angels from the saints. His angels are more like muscular heroes or
laboring men. Michelangelo takes classical or idealized forms developed by Italian Renaissance
artists (including himself) of the early 16th century but exaggerated these forms in
unconventional ways in order to heighten tension, power, and emotion. He was free to
experiment with traditional subjects from the Bible and mythology; they might intensify the
drama and add literary and visual references so that even knowledgeable viewers had to work
hard to decipher the meaning. The Last Judgment is painted using contorted figures, twisting
poses, elongated human figures, strained poses, and unusual effects of scale and perspective,
The Renaissance was all about geometry, harmony, perspective, balance, symmetry, perfecting
anatomical structures, and a movement from copying sculptures to copying real bodies. Now
this new style depicts unrealistic proportions, an offbeat perspective, a complex composition, and

exaggerated or elongated figures and disproportionate human forms (the figures heads are too
small for their bodies).
Unlike earlier Renaissance techniques, in the Last Judgment there is a flattened out sense of
perspective creating a relative disorganization in the painting. Those falling and rising according
to Christs judgment appear jumbled and in a throng, twisting and turning bound together. Christ
is the only one with freedom of movement. Foreshortening, a technique for achieving the
illusion of forms projecting into space, gives the fresco an unrealistic illusion of space, with
sharp jumps from foreground to background rather than gradual transitions. Its a style that
displays the skill of the artist and demands knowledge of the viewer. Michelangelos fresco
involved the spectator in ways that traditional last judgments did not. In the fresco, the dead rise
in a group but are separated as individuals. The intended audience knew that Michelangelos
goal was not to paint some long ago and far away scene, something that happened to someone
else who was no longer alive. They would understand that the fresco was about something that
would happen eventually, something that would involve the audience; something that they could
not escape.
Few members of Michelangelos intended audience would have been shocked by the fresco,
because they understood the theology underlying the artistry. But something new had entered
the world- something that would change everything even more than the Copernican revolution.
Michelangelos fresco would no longer have to face only the probing eyes of the papal familgia,
it would have to face something new- public opinion, brought about by the printing press.
Several artists had begun to copy the fresco in engravings and, prints of these engraving
circulated widely throughout Europe. These artists helped to create another, less sophisticated
audience, one that knew the fresco only through reproductions and written descriptions. The
response of this latter audience eventually prompted the church to censor the painting.
Michelangelo spent his life glorifying the Church, etching Catholic ideals into masterpieces that
defined religion for the masses. Yet when he died, his body was secretly shepherded off to
Florence, and the Church was denied the opportunity to honor him with a grand funeral in Rome.
This masterpiece goes beyond the bounds of the Renaissance which began from the adoration of
humankind and ends with depicting the underlying baseness of the human spirit. The Last
Judgment displays qualities that depart from Renaissance ideas. Art historians call this new
artistic style Mannerism. Mannerism created a valuable link between the Renaissance period and
the emotional Baroque movement that followed in the 17th century.
As I explored the historical context in which the Last Judgment was created, I felt swept away by
the enormous titanic social, religious and scientific changes racing across Europe. Echoing the
unease felt by Europeans in the face of this overwhelming confluence of events, I wasnt sure
what to write about. This monumental work of art is packed with information, symbolism,
history, iconography, politics, religious fervor, mythology and conspiracy. As I uncovered the
secrets behind the fresco, I discovered engrossing stories of conspiring kings, plotting popes and

murderous rivalries between noble families who were vying for control over Michelangelo and
his art. After some detective work, I began to understand how these forces influenced
Michelangelos creation of the Last Judgment. I was surprised to discover how radically
Michelangelo moved away from his earlier Renaissance. The Counter-Reformation movement
that arose from the ashes of the Renaissance presaged the dawn of a new era is art and
philosophy- one of the Enlightenment and the Baroque period.
As I paid attention to the image of this Last Judgment, I better understood the world in which
Michelangelo lived and his changing, often tortured relationship with his patrons the popes, his
own salvation and his artistic genius of expression. Everyone wanted a piece of Michelangelo
and everyone had something to gain or lose by the art he produced. I cant help but wonder
about his inner turmoil and despair.
I never understood the relationship between the Vatican ceiling and the altar wall fresco. The
two works always seemed completely different, as if painted by a different artist in a different
time period. Now I realize why, in just a few short decades, there was such a radical departure in
style and function between the two works. He remains, I believe, one of the artistic geniuses of
all time and the Last Judgment, his greatest work. He died February 18th, 1564, at the age of 89.